


Our Museum of Modern Art

by sasha_b



Category: Revolution (TV)
Genre: Gen, Revolution Secret Santa 2014
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-12-25
Updated: 2014-12-25
Packaged: 2018-03-03 12:05:42
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,261
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2850254
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sasha_b/pseuds/sasha_b
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Charlie makes a decision, and Miles helps.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Our Museum of Modern Art

**Author's Note:**

  * For [marciaelena](https://archiveofourown.org/users/marciaelena/gifts).



> Set at the beginning of season two. Spoilers for both of them. Thank you to my beta Cat! <3

By the time Miles comes outside to join her, Charlie’s already thought through about fourteen different possibilities to get what she wants done.

He plops down next to her on the fallen tree she’s perched on, her right foot raised and resting on a bit of branch that hasn’t broken off yet. Her boots have finally broken in, comfortable, and for a brief moment she’s really thankful for the destroyed settlement they’d found half way here. She wonders at her lack of compassion for the people that had died in their home, wonders why she didn’t care when she’d stripped the boots off the dead girl’s body, wonders why she felt nothing when they’d raided the kitchen for anything they could find that was useful.

She tugs at the jacket she wears, something her dad had patched multiple times when she and Danny had come back from wandering in the woods near their village, his voice gently grumpy as he’d sewn the leather back in place. Not like she couldn’t have done it, but…she smiles quickly, a flash of lightning over her young face, and Miles sighs deeply, something she doesn’t hear him do often anymore. It’s as though once the bombs dropped, he stopped doing anything for himself and did everything for her and her mom. Anyone but him.

She rolls her lips inward.

“What are you planning?”

His voice is steady and serious, almost annoyed, and his arm is warm against hers. For just a second she reconsiders.

“Look up,” she answers, pointing to the dark sky, black as pitch, black as the road, black as the blankness inside her, wrapping her in a cloak of safety, no feelings, nothing save _Danny_ and _Nora_ and _Dad_ and _revenge_ any more. In some part of her she hates that, hates that she isn’t what she once was, but all she can see is her mother’s face, crippled by what Randall did, and by what Monroe did, and she imagines she can hear the screams of the people in Philly and Georgia.

“Stars. So what, Charlie? What are you planning?”

“Dad showed me this painting, once,” she continues, ignoring him. The night presses in around them, Willoughby quiet at their backs, and she knows her grandpa is waiting for them to come back inside, despite his insistence he’d go to bed. The wind picks up and blow-dries her sweat and she feels the weight of the gun at her side, and the presence of her crossbow at her feet.

“It was in a book we’d found in the library, at home. It was amazing,” her voice gets quiet, and Miles doesn’t interrupt. She feels him leaning closer, just a bit. He feels less tense. “All whorls and swirls and this tiny little town, away in the distance, but I could see it so clearly. It was like I’d been there, or like that was where I wanted to be,” she smiles, and it lasts longer this time. Her hair doesn’t feel so heavy anymore, and the sky is broad and expansive and she tucks her hand inside Miles’ arm.

  
“Doesn’t this look like it would go on forever if it could? That’s what that painting looked like to me, too.”

She feels Miles’ gaze on her, but continues to look at the blackness dotted by infinite twinkles. Her dad had told her that painting was really famous in its day, and she remembers understanding why. It had wrapped her in a cocoon of warmth, of love and compassion and she’d thought about it all day and night, even when she was hunting, even when Danny was with her and chattering about inane stuff, even when Dad’s blood had coated her hands and face, even when Maggie had died and she’d said _everyone leaves me_ and Miles hadn’t.

She leans her head on his shoulder. He sighs again.

“I have to do this, Miles,” she whispers, her words cracking, but just once.

“I know, kid,” he answers. Conviction in his tone, but with such sadness it brings a lump to her throat.

Blinking, bright stars. Danny, Dad, Nora, Maggie.

Charlie.

She stands and he comes with her. They both watch the sky, the sounds of the dry trees around them crackling with the wind. Her crossbow is a comfortable hulk of metal and wood at her feet, and she reaches to pick it up, slinging it around her shoulders.

Too much has happened in the past few months, too much for her to process without doing _something_ and she thinks of that painting, thinks of her dad’s directive _find Danny_ and thinks of what would have happened if she hadn’t. Would he have lived longer? Would Monroe have let her brother live?

Most likely not.

She turns to Miles and looks up at him, the brightness of the stars behind his head throwing his face into shadow. She loves her uncle, she realizes, loves him like he’s the only thing left that matters, besides the memory of her brother and what she has to do for him. Miles has taken care of her like no one else has. That is enough to bring tears to her eyes, even though she knows, now, that she could have made it by herself through the wilderness, all this way to Texas and to her grandpa, but it would have been really awful without him, and without the others, really.

Her mom – her mom is a conundrum she won’t think on right this second.

“That painting is called Starry Night,” Miles says, his hand gripping her arm as they face one another. His craggy face splits with a quick grin, and it’s gone before she can call him out for it. His own gun rests at his left shoulder, his sword swinging at his hip. Charlie thinks about how painful this has had to have been for Miles – the unexpected change, finding his family again, losing Nora, losing what had passed for a brother (although Charlie doesn’t understand Miles’ relationship with Monroe and probably never will). She cocks her head and lets him grip her arm.

“Yep.”

“Will you at least be careful?”

“It’s me, Miles.”

“That’s what I’m worried about.” His eyes crinkle at the corners.

She smiles and laughs, the wind at her back blowing her hair forward, tangling the long strands about her neck and shoulders, one big hank getting stuck in a brass button at the throat of her jacket. Miles untangles it gently, his big fingers cupping her chin briefly. He pulls her into a tight embrace, his lean frame enveloping her smaller one (but she’s just as wiry and strong as he is) and she holds him for a heart stopping breath, this man that’s become a father and friend and it’s such an unexpected boon she doesn’t know what to do with it.

She pulls away and he pops his eyebrows up. “Stay calm. Okay? Put away the nutty for a while. Idiot.”

She shakes her head. “Okay, Miles.”

Even though it’s almost midnight (or thereabouts) she imagines her grandpa at the door, waiting for them. “Come on,” she says into the evening air, and they walk side by side back to Willoughby proper, their weapons clinking with their motions, and Charlie can’t imagine how she came to be like this.

But then she takes a last look at the stars and thinks of that painting and knows that its beauty, despite how it had made her feel at the time, has no place in this world, anymore.

**Author's Note:**

> Written for the nbc_revolution livejournal Secret Santa 2014 exchange. Prompt: _starry nights_.
> 
> I love and missed the relationship between Charlie and Miles in season two, and wanted to expound on her leaving to go after Monroe here.
> 
> Happy Holidays, lovely.


End file.
